


Alternamorphs

by NixKat



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Multi-Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Dinosaurs, Gen, Multiple Crossovers, Peggy Sue, Self-Insert, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-09-07 02:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16845142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NixKat/pseuds/NixKat
Summary: The lost 6th Animorph returns with a stolen Skrit Na bioweapon. Can she fix the timeline, save countless lives from suffering and the threat of extinction? Or will the alternamorphs cause things to go to shit twice as fast.





	1. Jane Doe

As far as anyone needs to know my name is Jane. 

Jane Doe.

I don’t really care if you think that’s a joke. It doesn't matter. I’m not who I used to be and it fits.

I’m writing this as a full account of the events in this timeline, just in case I’m replaced by another version of myself. If we do end up winning this war I wouldn’t mind publishing this. I’ve lived long enough to not really care about the opinions of strangers. Even if at the moment I might look like an average thirteen-year-old girl. Gender’s fake anyway. And so is money. But the danger is real.

Everyone you know is in danger. 

You. Your mom. Your cousins. Your friend’s dog. Your teachers. The woods at the outskirts of the city. As the song goes, ‘There is a war going on for your mind.’ 

Literally. 

Your body too. They don’t really need the dogs and the woods. They’ll just burn those and kill anything else that isn’t vital to human survival. A massive waste of time and resources in my opinion but I’m not leading the invasion. Also, a gross misunderstanding of how biomes work together to make the planet livable in the first place but again I’m not leading the invasion. 

...I’m getting sidetracked again.

Ever watch the  _ Invasion of the Body Snatchers _ movies? Something like that is happening on Earth right now. Except with mind control parasitoid slugs that squeeze into your ear to wrap around your brain and not psychic plant people. Anyone you know could be controlled by a yeerk so watch what you say and avoid The Sharing. 

Might wanna just learn how to survive off the grid just in case.


	2. Jane Doe

I awoke in this timeline a year ago. 

Still morph-capable. Always morph-capable. 

Eoptis says that the Z Space anchor was what aggravated my pre-existing vongut, but I’m pretty sure the sario rips and godthings dicking about with time didn’t help. So as long as I slip along time, I’m a morpher. Shapeshifter.

You don’t need to know what vogut is. It's so rare that that andalites barely think it exists and they came up with the term. Something to do with somebody meeting some weird nihilistic green aliens after getting kidnapped by the Skrit Na.

The only other person I met who has is it Cassandra and hers is entirely different.

Speaking of Cassandra. I made sure to check in on her and the rest of the Animorphs. The Animorphs, the main group of freedom fighters in the war against the yeerk empire (in some timelines there are other groups like the Star Defenders and Splinter but not always). If things go well they’ll be incredibly famous. Earth’s first line of defense in a secret war. The fun part is, like me (kind of) they’re all barely teenagers when everything starts. 

But I found that they hadn’t even formed yet given that Tobias was still human. 

The Animorphs as indicated by the name were ‘animal morphers’. Think Beast Boy from the Doom Patrol but shit. Like better in that morphing turned you into a healthy copy of any animal you could touch and had the bonus of healing all wounds. Shitty as in no going from one animal to another, rather long disgusting transformations, and a nasty two-hour time limit before being permanently stuck in a morph. In almost every timeline I’d been in Tobias tends to get stuck as a red-tailed hawk not long after getting the power.

None of them picked up on my codes meaning that we weren’t in one of those ‘Tobias doesn’t immediately screw up’ timelines either. He still does usually. Almost always within the first month of getting the morphing power. Granted the others aren’t much better. Especially not at first.

The Sharing was up and going. So not one of the timelines where things go pear-shaped in my thirties or sixties. Possibly. Could be that one slapdash universe where the Animorphs never formed and the war ended in like a week. Not gonna hold my breath tho. 

Decided to get a head start on scooping out Yeerk pool entrances and exists. Made sure my mental list of the controlled was up to date for this universe. I never understood why the andalites called people being piloted by yeerks 'controllers'. Pretty sure the direct opposite of that word would be a better fit. Then again there’s a lot of dicks in the andalite military.

No action other than some graffiti, no need to start things off before I had any backup. I already learned the hard way that the Animorphs needed the yeerks to be unready at the beginning of the fight. Fighting morph-capable controlled is not fun.

Note to self: Make sure we rescue Aximili. Andalites kill the Animorphs otherwise. 

The family is weird. My family that is. My mom and my little sister. And Dexter my hamster. It was weird enough pretending to be a normal kid when I was the original Jane. Since then I’d become a grandmother. I’d lead a terrorist cell in a post-apocalyptic war zone for a decade and watched my soldiers--human, taxxon, hork-bajir, yeerk, and andalite-- die in front of me. I’d lived for months lost in the gods damned Cretaceous being hunted by pterosaurs. Being told when to go to bed or what to do with my free time really chafed. I could probably fake grievous head injury to excuse behaving like my real self. 

I’m not sure when the Skrit Na kidnapped me.


	3. Jane Doe

Imagine an alien. If you pictured the big-headed, big-eyed, frail-bodied grey or green stereotypical pop culture alien then you know what the Skrit Na look like. What a Na looks like. The Skrit is what the immature ones are called and they look a lot more like giant wingless roaches. Real aliens are weird like that. There was even one race that looked like that horribly claymation Gumby thing before eye Satan had them wiped out.

What motivates the Skrit Na? Your guess is as good as mine. Far as I can tell they've been doing weird random shit like abductions and livestock mutilations since the age of the dinosaurs. Even saw one of their ships with my own two eyes while fighting what I’m pretty sure was a tyrannosaur. Threw me for a real loop.

These Na strapped me down on a slab over a week ago. They’d held me for a few days before that in a cage with what I can only assume were other kidnapped people until I killed one of them with my bare hands and escaped.

Na are hilariously weak.

But they have good technology. Like tranquilizers. And whatever they used to prevent me from morphing. Plus the machine that they’d hooked me up to that could read my scattered memories. A really flimsy machine that I could easily crush underfoot if I were not strapped to a table.

I just really don’t like being strapped to a table.

The straps chafe. There’s pins n’ needle tingling everywhere because I can't move. I can feel my muscles weakening from disuse. And it's boring!

That is until the Na brought in a sealed fishbowl containing some kind of fat tropical looking worm. All black and shiny with a streak of red and a streak of blue running down the sides. The Na that brought it in, one of which I’d fought before and bitten off a few of its fingers, pressed a button on a remote that opened the seal of the fish tank and then bolted from the room with its comrade and sealed the door.

The worm rose slowly and deliberately, feeling its surroundings with two sets of antennae that brushed across my face. I bit them when they got close enough to my mouth. It stuck its face up my nose and the rest of it followed inside.

Choking and gagging because a several foot long worm decided that the nasal passages were the best gateway into the body is one of the worst ways I’ve lost consciousness.


	4. Jane Doe

_ This is a prerecorded message. _

Consciousness returned like a sledgehammer to the temple. A star-studded night stretched overhead uninterrupted by buildings or trees. Pebbles and dry dusty earth stuck to my sweat-slick back like icing on a cake. The Badlands. Lovely.

_ Congratulations human kludge-mind known as [JANE DOE]! You have been randomly selected to participate in the trial run of our ENDOSYMBIOTIC BIOMORPH. The andalite Z Space connection of your prior morphing software has been disconnected and its morph data transferred to your new ENDOSYMBIOTIC BIOMORPH and its offshoots. Enjoy brand new features such as direct morph to morph transitions, comparable anatomy algorithms, UNLIMITED morph hours, and hive mind data storage. We will be keeping track of how you decide to use it for improvements to future models. _

_ End prerecorded message.  _

Huh.

I have to admit nothing like this had ever happened to me in the one hundred and forty-nine other times I’d been thirteen. Silver lining? No more Z Space anchor, no more timeslips. I’m on my last life for all I know. Granted I won’t know for sure unless I kick it or get involved with another Sario rip.

Lovely.

I guess I need to get my life together if this is my last. Figure out how to bond with my family again. Try and get that happy ending for once. Warn people about the giant cosmic assimilating god-monsters.

Priorities. Home first. Get sleep.

I could see the light pollution from the city on the horizon. Feel the cold desert wind on my skin. In another life, I’d walked miles to town barefoot, paranoid about the veleek and alone. There’s a nice little system of caves out under the badlands, could make a nice base with a bit of work. As it was it was only about an hour’s flight to the city. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my Harris hawk morph. The chocolate brown feathers, red shoulders, white rump. The strong talons. That doofy look on their face if you look them head-on. 

_ Accessing: Parabuteo unicinctus _

The first thing I noticed was a distinct lack of crunching bones or squirming organs. Normally morphing was gross. Like absolutely Cronenbergian nightmare fuel territory. I’ve literally turned inside out while turning into bugs and I know enough about mammalian anatomy to know that my knees shouldn’t bend backwards every time I turn into a hyena. 

This was… smooth. Smooth like Dr. Pepper on a hot day. I opened my eyes to see purplish fluid well up out of my pores to cover my skin in a cloak of feathers. It flowed into a sharply curved hawk’s beak over my nose and mouth. My toes and ankles lengthed as I shrank down, hunched over to about a foot or so tall. I flicked my tail left and then right as soon as I felt it come in. The morph finished.

The hawk mind settled in with a kind of loneliness for its pack that I’d forgotten how to feel for myself. The bird did not like being on the ground at night where predators could get it. I pushed the hawk’s worries down with practiced ease and gave myself a good once over. I could still feel my hands and that was weird. I lifted my left wing, it was purple. I was a very purple Harris hawk. The markings were all right, just in monochrome purple. I moved my wing in the different flight positions and it looked right until I moved it like the human hand it could feel…

The primaries were not feathers.

They were fingers flattened to look like feathers. I could rotate the wing like a human hand and arm, something very impossible for a bird’s wrist. I moved my tongue and felt human teeth. With my cartoon bird wing hands, I felt my face and found the beak that I could very much see in the moonlight. The inside of the beak felt like a regular beak right up until I felt the tiny human teeth at the very back and had to suppress my gag reflex. I was wearing a suit. I was morphed but also wearing a suit.

Weird.

I beat downwards with my wings and found out that yes. This freaky suit thing still worked like a real Harris hawk. I could fly, so I flapped hard to gain altitude. Not a lot of thermal riding in the cold dark night, but I saved energy with a good tilt in my glide to get the most distance before I had to gain altitude again.

I arrived home after about an hour, demorphed from the freaky bird suit, and the key was still under the fake flower pot by the door. I knew how to sneak silently, to stick close to the furniture and walls where the floor was settled and unlikely to creak. I spread my weight across multiple steps at a time as I crept up as slow as a chameleon. My room was the same, though it looks like mom went back to feeding Dexter pellet food instead of the hay.

With my book light I wrote a list on an easily hideable scrap of paper:

  1. Backup for Rachel
  2. Melissa needs to know
  3. David
  4. Dogs can make a pool
  5. Mom deserves the truth



I folded the paper twice and stuffed it deep under the mattress. I snuffed the light and climbed under my own covers. Nothing like flat slabs of metal to make you miss a proper bed. Showers and talky things can wait until morning.


	5. Jane Doe

I woke to a scream.

“Moooooom! Sissi’s back!” My little sister, Lexie screamed at the top of her lungs. Lexie is five going on six. Her birthday is pretty much the day after things go down at the construction site. 

I still had a month left before shit hits the fan.

Mom rushed in like the Flash on crack. Her hands instantly on my face and on my body checking for damage. It's annoying and she reopened the damage in my nose done by the bioworm thing (note to self: bioworm morphing does not heal as much as regular morphing) but she cared so I didn’t put up a fight. And I was still too tired to keep of with the flurry of questions and self reprimands streaming from her mouth. By the time the police and paramedics arrived, I was at least dressed and fed (Goldengrams, mom got some of the good cereals to try and help Lexie cope with the whole missing sister thing).

I don’t like cops. Fucking attack dogs of the rich. Try living in a blatant police state and you’ll see what I mean if you don’t have your head shoved up your anus. Just one more thing that needed to be fixed after we defeated the yeerk empire.

“Alright let’s go over this again,” the cop who was more than likely controlled by a yeerk said with a sigh. “You were kidnapped by the ‘little big-eyed aliens like from the X Files’,”

“I swear it with the Lord as my witness.”

“They had you in a cage for several days before you escaped by strangling one to death and stealing a key.”

“Yep. I bit off another one’s fingers. Tasted weird, like raw crab.”

“Ok...Then you were tranquilized and strapped to a table and probed and then you woke up somewhere nearby?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, Miss Doe can we talk to you outside?”

I have no doubt that the officer wanted to discuss my mental health with my mom. If the cop is controlled then he’d know what a Skrit-Na is and how often they buzz Earthers. Not much of a concern. Who’d believe a little girl who said she was abducted by aliens? No need to waste a higher up’s time on it. Worst-case scenario they send me to therapy to waste my mom’s time and look like they were working on the case.

My money’s right and the police give my mom a card for a counselor that works with the Sharing. The paramedics do a few checks and not much else before leaving. And a reporter shows up wanting in on the story. I didn’t care but mom did and threatened to sue the pants off of him if he tried approaching any of us again. She’s stressed.

The story still winds up in the paper the next day.

School is extra fun when I get back to it. 

Mom let me stay out of class for a few days with the school work I’d missed and took me to see a therapist before making me go back to school. I was never the most social person before the timeslips. After them it’s really hard to care about the opinions of petty, ignorant children. Still, a good way to get people to shut up about something is to give them something different to talk about, like a good beating.

Mom was becoming a problem. I had a week left before E-day, time as any to nip that in the bud.


	6. Jane Doe (end)

On Monday morning I woke to a series of notes under my pillow.

I need to reorganize everything. Replan.

I’ve got less than five days. Best time to talk to Melissa is still Thursday to get her in the right place. And I need to make quacks.

It's going to be a while before I update again.


	7. Melissa Chapman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane needs soldiers for the war and where better to start than someone already in the thick of it whether she knows it or not?

My name is Melissa. Last name Chapman. 

I don’t have to worry about this falling into the wrong hands. I store it inside of my partner, and if it ever got taken from her somehow then that means we're both dead. At the end of things, everyone is going to publish our journals. So that world will know why things happened as they did. No excuses, no lies, just the naked truth. 

I suppose I should start at the beginning? But where is the beginning? Is it when I realized that my parents didn’t love me anymore? Is it when I learned the awful truth about the universe? Did my story start on the first mission into a pit from hell where I took my first lives under the leadership of a half-mad kludge mind time traveler trying to be human?

If this is going to be published one day I might as well tell a good story.

My name is Melissa Chapman. It’s Thursday and three o'clock and I’m dragging my feet on the way to my locker because I’m not ready to go home yet. Not because I like school. I’m not a nerd. It’s just that home is… not like it used to be. Besides, I don’t have to worry about being late for the bus since my could drive me home if I asked. Or get my mom too if he was busy with a Sharing meeting. 

I hate The Sharing.

The Sharing is a social club kind of like the YMCA. They host barbeques, clean up beaches, have ‘family friendly parties for young people’, and do charity work. Which is ok I guess. On the surface. But underneath that.

...I think its a cult. Now, I only know about cults from what I’ve seen on tv and what I’ve been reading in books from the library so I’m no expert. But I’ve been watching people, the kids who join The Sharing. Pretty much all of them _ change _ after they get full membership. They drop every interest aside from The Sharing. Things like sports, clubs, even friend groups just kinda fall to the wayside as they become a cheery drone for their Sharing overlords.

Thinking about it my parents haven’t really been the same since they joined.

It's as good as any reason for why they just don’t care anymore. Better than me doing something I don’t remember so bad that they both decided to stop loving me. Dr. Johnson has been a big help with squashing that train of thought. Sending me to the counselor’s office was probably the nicest thing I can remember my dad doing recently where he was actually invested in it. Of course, he stopped paying attention almost right after.

And frankly, it’s not like I trust Dr. Johnson either. He’s about as involved with The Sharing as my dad. And he’s very quick to change the subject whenever I bring up cults.

I didn’t have an appointment with Dr. Johnson and I didn’t have any gymnastics classes until the weekend for the rest of this week. So I had to bite the bullet and do some homework. After getting the rest of my books from my locker.

“Aye lil’ mama, let me whisper in ya ear!”


End file.
